A Sudden Gush

What Happens When Your Water Breaks?

By Renee Roberson

California mom Brenda Sullivan has a funny story she likes to tell about the night her water broke while she was carrying twins in 1992. It was halftime during the Super Bowl and the Washington Redskins were playing.

"Snow was on the ground and we had to stop and gas up the car," she says. "When we arrived at the hospital, there was not a soul to be found everyone was in the patient rooms watching the game. My husband had to hunt for a wheelchair and take me up to the maternity ward himself. We did not see a single person while traveling through a decent-size hospital in Alexandria, Va.," says Sullivan, who delivered her sons the next day, eight weeks early.

It's a moment most expectant mothers look forward to and dread all at the same time. They look forward to it because it signals the end of pregnancy and, in most cases, the onset of labor and delivery for the baby they've been dreaming of for nine months. They dread it because it has the potential to happen in a less-than-desirable place, where easy cleanup may not be a possibility.

During the final weeks of pregnancy, some women sleep on top of towels so their sheets won't be stained when their amniotic fluid or "bag of waters" breaks. Others fearfully move through their final days praying they won't be somewhere (i.e. work, grocery store, mall) where the action of their water breaking would leave behind an embarrassing mess.

We've all seen movies where such things happen to pregnant characters, such as Drew Barrymore's amniotic fluid gushing onto the floor in Riding in Cars with Boysor Kirstie Alley's water breaking onthe streets of New York in Look Who's Talking so who wouldn't picture that as the way most women's bag of waters break?

Interestingly enough, it usually doesn't happen that way for most women. In fact, both Dr. Edward J. Lazarus, an OB/GYN who works with the UT Medical Group in Tennessee, and Dr. Adelaide G. Nardone, medical advisor to Lansinoh Laboratories, say that only between 8 and 10 percent of their patients experience their water breaking at term. The majority of the time expectant moms actually have their physicians break their waters for them, after labor has already begun.

Want to see more?

• Amniotic Fluid: A Main Ingredient in Pregnancy
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• Polyhydramnios: Too Much Amniotic Fluid
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